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For a brief period, over 1982-86, the U.K. enjoyed a remarkable film renaissance. Four films – “Chariots of Fire,” (1982) “Gandhi,” (1983) “The Killing Fields” (1985) and “The Mission” (1986) – won a total 19 Academy Awards, including Best Picture two years running. All of those films, save “Gandhi,” were produced by David Puttnam.

To this day, few figures are more associated with a national film revival. “The British are coming,” “The Chariots of Fire” screenwriter Colin Welland famously said in his Oscar speech. The main Brit Hollywood had on their radar was Puttnam. He was appointed CEO of Columbia Pictures in 1986, becoming the first and only foreigner ever, he notes, to serve on the board of the MPA.

Knighted in 1995, Puttman ended his film career in 1997, at 56, when he was appointed a life peer. “When I finished ‘Memphis Belle,’ I kind of knew that I was never going to make better films than the ones I’d already produced,...

Aerial war movies capture the essence of air warfare through striking visuals and touching stories of bravery and sacrifice. Works like Twelve O'Clock High and The Memphis Belle blend historical accuracy with cinematic flair, standing as exemplary war movies. Films such as Red Tails, Iron Eagle, and Flyboys offer varied perspectives on aerial combat, combining action with historical significance.

The world of aerial war movies offers moviegoers a good portrayal of the skies' battles and the feats of bravery that define aerial combat. From the early days of aviation to the modern era, these films capture the essence of air warfare with striking visuals and touching stories. They portray the skill, strategy, and courage required to master flight in the heat of conflict. Often set in historical events that shaped the course of history, movies like Dunkirk stand as some of the best war movies of all time.

As the genre has evolved,...

Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.

Netflix's new rom-com, Find Me Falling, features a famous rock star retreating to Cyprus. The film follows the protagonist's journey as he reconnects with past lovers and faces difficult decisions. Find Me Falling's cast includes Harry Connick Jr. in the leading role.

Netflix continues contributing to the rom-com renaissance with Find Me Falling, a movie with an impressive cast, including Harry Connick Jr. and a handful of up-and-coming stars. The 2024 romantic comedy, directed and written by Stelana Kliris, revolves around a famous rock star from America who retreats to Cyprus, an island south of Turkey and west of Syria. There, he buys a remote home near a cliff, where he wants to escape his life and career after a poorly-reviewed album release. Unfortunately for him, though, the house overlooks the sea and is where many die by suicide (unbeknownst to him).

While in Cyprus,...

Chicago – The journey of a thousand miles begins … in the case of “Hard Miles” starring Matthew Modine … with a single pedal. “Hard Miles” joins the pantheon of cycling movies, in this case with Modine portraying a social worker who teaches his life lessons through a bicycling journey with his youthful charges.

The based-on-truth story features Greg (Modine) as a beleaguered social worker at a Colorado juvenile correctional cente, with a passion for bicycle challenges and a revelatory idea for rehabilitation … rounding up an unlikely crew of incarcerated students to complete a transformative 762 mile ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon. To achieve their goal, this determined mentor and his disgruntled teenage squad will battle heat stroke, speed wobbles, mountainous inclines, and most of all each other to come together as a unified team.

Matthew Modine in Chicago, October of 2023

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Matthew Modine was born in California,...

The Exchange has acquired the world sales rights for romantic comedy “The Islander,” starring Grammy- and Emmy Award-winning musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. The film features two original songs by Connick. The Exchange will introduce the title to buyers at next week’s American Film Market.

“The Islander” is about a down-on-his-luck rockstar, who moves to a remote cliffside house, sight unseen, on an island, only to discover his new home has an unfortunate notoriety. Through a series of charming mishaps, it turns out maybe love can be found right where he left it.

The film is written, directed and produced by Stelana Kliris under her Cyprus-based Meraki Films banner. It is also produced by Jupiter Peak Productions, Steven Shapiro, and Keith Arnold, with the support of the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture, and the Cyprus Film Commission’s incentives scheme.

Alongside Connick, it stars Agni Scott, Ali Fumiko Whitney and Tony Demetriou.

Chicago – The stature and talent of actor Matthew Modine has loomed large for nearly two generations. He began his career in his early twenties, and continues to make an impact as he takes on new roles … for instance, that of a social worker in “Hard Miles,” which screened at the 59th Chicago International Film Festival (Ciff).

Matthew Modine at the 59th Ciff on October 21, 2023

Photo credit: Joe Arce for HollywoodChicago.com

Greg (Modine) is a beleaguered social worker at a Colorado juvenile correctional center with a passion for bicycle racing and a revelatory idea for rehabilitation …rounding up an unlikely crew of incarcerated students to complete a transformative 1000-mile ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon. To achieve their goal, this determined coach and his disgruntled teenage squad will battle heat stroke, speed wobbles, mountainous inclines, and most of all each other to come together as a unified team.

Matthew Modine was born in California,...

While cinematic history is full of movies about the military and war, films about the Air Force in particular are essential because of the important stories they tell about one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The Air Force is one of six branches of the United States military including the Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and the Space Force. Through history, the Air Force has played a key role in many conflicts such as World War I and World War II.

When it comes to depicting the Air Force on screen, there are many avenues to take. Typically, films about the Air Force focus on certain battles or wars, and more often than not, their stories are based on true events. More than that, Air Force movies often emphasize the importance of planes and aviation within combat and the intense fear and danger that comes with flying in war.

There are many aspects that led to Top Gun: Maverick becoming a Best Picture contender at the Oscars, but it cannot be denied that it is one of the best movies about aerial warfare. Seeing Tom Cruise's Maverick and the other characters engaged in thrilling midair battles is unlike most any other action sequences in movies. Strangely enough, these types of combat movies seem to be rarer than others, however, there are still enough examples of movies that can be named as the best movies about aerial combat.

Understandably, most movies in this limited genre deal with wartime battles and even draw from real events. These movies stretch back to the earliest days of the moviemaking industry to as recent as 2022's Top Gun Maverick. Given such a wide time period covered in the genre, audiences can see a lot of different techniques used for the aerial combat sequence...

Released in 2013, “Lone Survivor” is an emotional tour de force based on the best-selling 2007 memoir by the same name. Directed by Peter Berg, this action-packed war movie follows a Navy Seal team on a mission to capture Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region.

The thrilling cast and on-location filming create an intense viewing experience that highlights the bravery of the soldiers who fought alongside one another. With numerous awards and nominations under its belt, “Lone Survivor” provides a natural and powerful look at the life of a soldier in modern warfare.

The gripping movie, directed and penned by Peter Berg, featured Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana in pivotal roles.

With a budget of 40 million, Lone Survivor became a box-office success, grossing over 154 million worldwide. The film has also been met with positive reviews from critics and audiences alike.

If you...

Further new openers include ‘Our Ladies’, ‘The Nest’.

Universal’s franchise title Candyman leads this weekend’s new openers at the UK-Ireland box office, looking to join the list of horror films to have made strong debuts since cinemas reopened.

Candyman is directed by Nia DaCosta and written by DaCosta, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. It is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name, and the fourth film in the Candyman series, based on Clive Barker’s 1985 short story The Forbidden.

The film has been delayed several times due to the pandemic, having been first scheduled for June,...

Further new openers include ‘Our Ladies’, ‘The Nest’.

Universal’s franchise title Candyman leads this weekend’s new openers at the UK-Ireland box office, looking to join the list of horror films to have made strong debuts since cinemas reopened.

Candyman is directed by Nia DaCosta and written by DaCosta, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. It is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name, and the fourth film in the Candyman series, based on Clive Barker’s 1985 short story The Forbidden.

The film has been delayed several times due to the pandemic, having been first scheduled for June,...

Exclusive: We hear that Matthew Modine, Embeth Davidtz and Arian Moayed have boarded Studiocanal’s Liam Neeson thriller Retribution in key roles.

The pic, which shoots in Berlin, stars Neeson as a banking executive whose life is thrown upside down when a bomb is placed inside his car with him and his family, and the banker’s children are forced to go through the harrowing events with him. Nimrod Antal is directing.

Noma Dumezweni, Jack Champion and Lilly Aspell also star. Champion and Aspell play the banker’s son and daughter, respectively.

Modine is a Primetime Emmy nominee for his turn in the 1993 HBO movie And the Band Played On. His feature credits include such movies as Married to the Mob, Full Metal Jacket, The Dark Knight Rises, Memphis Belle, Pacific Heights, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, 47 Meters Down, Breaking News in Yuba County and the upcoming movie The Martini Shot...

Here’s the latest episode of the The Filmmakers Podcast, part of the ever-growing podcast roster here on Nerdly. If you haven’t heard the show yet, you can check out previous episodes on the official podcast site, whilst we’ll be featuring each and every new episode as it premieres.

For those unfamiliar with the series, The Filmmakers Podcast is a podcast about how to make films from micro budget indie films to bigger budget studio films and everything in-between. Our hosts Giles Alderson, Dan Richardson, Andrew Rodger and Cristian James talk how to get films made, how to actually make them and how to try not to f… it up in their very humble opinion. Guests will come on and chat about their film making experiences from directors, writers, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers and distributors.

The Filmmakers Podcast #208: Matthew Modine on Stranger Things, Wrong Turn, Acting, Directing and working with legendary filmmakers.

In his latest podcast/interview, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to film composer Sacha Puttnam about his new music project which is out now: Spirit of Cinema: Sacha Puttnam with the Classic Film Orchestra.

Tracklisting: Love’s Theme

Original score by Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express, 1978. Best Original score at the Oscars, 1979 First of May

Music by The Bee Gees for the film Melody, 1971 Chariots of Fire

Original score by Vangelis for the film Chariots of Fire, 1981. Best original score at The Oscars, 1982 Sailing Homeward

Music by Donovan for the film The Pied Piper, 1972 Gabriel’s Theme

Original score by Ennio Morricone for The Mission, 1986. Best Original Score at The Golden Globes and Best Music at The Baftas, 1986 Theme From Midnight Express (Istanbul)

Original score by Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express, 1978. Best Original score at the Oscars, 1979 War of the Buttons Suite

Original score By Rachel Portman, from the film War of the Buttons,...

Exclusive: Matthew Modine has thrown his hat into the ring as a candidate for president of SAG-AFTRA. Modine, a member of the union’s local and national boards of directors, is running at the top of the Membership First ticket, the self-styled progressive wing of the union that promises more democracy and transparency — which the union’s loyal opposition says is in short supply. He seeks to unseat Gabrielle Carteris, who’s been president of the union since 2016.

“As a current national and local board member of SAG-aftra, it would be my honor to represent all 160,000 members of the union I have proudly been a member of for nearly four decades,” he said in a statement. “It is my privilege to stand up for our legacy in order to safeguard our future. There comes a time when we must work to ensure that current and future membership will...

Pop culture comes to life in St. Louis next month! It’s the Wizard World Comic Con April 5th – 7th at America’s Center downtown, and boy oh boy, do they have an amazing line-up of guests!

Wizard World Comic Con events bring together thousands of fans of all ages to celebrate the best in pop-fi, pop culture, movies, graphic novels, cosplay, comics, television, sci-fi, toys, video gaming, gaming, original art, collectibles, contests and more. St. Louis show hours are Friday, February 2nd, 3-8 p.m.; Saturday, February 3rd, 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sunday,February 4th, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Wizard World Comic Con St. Louis is also the place for cosplay, with fans young and old showing off their best costumes throughout the event. Fans dressed as every imaginable character – and some never before dreamed – will roam the convention floor and participate in the famed Wizard World Costume Contest on Saturday night.

The four-week, all-athlete edition of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” got mixed responses from fans, but the show’s 27th season coming up this fall will return the show to its normal schedule, and there’s a long list of celebrities who deserve to compete on the dance floor. Below is a list of male celebs I think the show should consider inviting to the ballroom to vie for the next Mirror Ball Trophy. Do you agree with my picks? Check them out below, and vote in our poll at the bottom of this post to let us know which you’d most like to see on “DWTS.” And feel free to let us know in comments what other stars you would like to see when the show comes back in September.

Jc Chasez

Chasez was a cast member on “The Mickey Mouse Club” along with other future stars like Britney Spears,...

Washington — AFI Docs has unveiled the lineup for this year’s festival, which kicks off with the world premiere of “Personal Statement.”

The fest — held from June 13 to June 17 in Washington and Silver Spring, Md. — will include five world premieres and feature 92 films representing 22 countries.

“Personal Statement,” directed by Juliane Dressner and Edwin Martinez, is about three high school seniors in Brooklyn who take it upon themselves to become college counselors in their schools in their determination to earn a higher education.

“United Skates,” about the fight to save roller skating rinks — a staple of African American culture — will close the festival. The project is directed by Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown.

The centerpiece screening will be Rory Kennedy’s “Above and Beyond: Nasa’s Journey to Tomorrow.” It tells the story about the workforce of Nasa in its exploration of the solar system and of Earth.

“While this...

Several years ago, Mark Harris began feeling a little self-conscious about a gap in his film-history knowledge. As a journalist for Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine and the late, lamented Web site Grantland, among others, he'd covered the waterfront of contemporary moviemaking. As an author, his book Pictures at a Revolution dissected the moment in the late 1960s when the last gasp of the Golden Age studio system gave way to what become known as "New Hollywood." Ask him about the works of legends like, say, John Ford and Frank Capra,...

Arguably the best documentary ever made about Hollywood and wartime, Five Came Back is nirvana for movie lovers and a real eye-opener for anyone new to the subject. Based on the brilliant, richly detailed bestseller by Mark Harris, this three-part chronicle of filmmakers doing their patriotic duty is receiving a theatrical run while also being available as a miniseries on Netflix. Whichever way you catch it, don't think of missing it.

Subtitled A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, Harris' 2014 book pivoted between the P.O.V.s...

The truth… just may be in Hawkins, Ind.

That’s our takeaway from the first trailer for Stranger Things, an X-Files-by-way-of-Stand-By-Me supernatural drama, starring Winona Ryder, that debuts on Netflix this summer.

Set in the Midwest in the 1980s, the series follows the hunt for a boy who goes missing under very odd circumstances. Ryder (Reality Bites) plays his mother, Joyce, whose desire to find her son “unravels a series of mysteries involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl,” per the official description. Meanwhile, the boy’s friends’ efforts to make sense of what...

Set against the summer riots of 2011, Nick Moorcroft’s coming-of-age movie about a young offender draws on his own troubled past

A scriptwriter from Essex who has gone on to make a name for himself in Hollywood has revealed that his own violent, drug-fuelled past provided material for the plot of his new film, Urban Hymn.

A coming-of-age movie that will have a gala screening in Glasgow on Friday February 19, ahead of a UK charity premiere, Urban Hymn is set during the UK’s summer riots of 2011 and tells the story of a young female offender, Jamie, and her relationships with her care worker, Kate, and her “bad girl” friend, Leanne. It features a cameo from musician Billy Bragg and is directed by Michael Caton-Jones, whose work includes the 1990 wartime bomber crew drama Memphis Belle.

Continue reading...

23 years ago today, James Doohan reprised his iconic “Star Trek” role as Montgomery Scott when he appeared in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” In that October 12, 1992 episode, written by Ronald D. Moore, the crew of the Enterprise discover Scotty’s life form on a Federation transport ship that’s been missing for 75 years. Rematerialized aboard the Enterprise, Scotty raises a glass to his absent crew members. We raise a glass to sci-fi logic that gives us the return of characters who should be long-dead. It was the first “Star Trek” episode directed by Alexander Singer, who went on to direct several more “Tng,” “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager” episodes. “Having Jimmy Doohan there, I felt I was in the middle of some kind of mythic experience,” he later said. Other notable October 12 happenings in pop culture history: •1969: The “Paul is dead” conspiracy took off when a...

Can a Song Save Your Life?: Caton-Jones’ Modest Return to Filmmaking

Scottish film director Michael Caton-Jones had a very prolific filmography in the 1990s thanks to films like Memphis Belle (1990), Rob Roy (1995), and The Jackal (1997). It’s been nearly a decade since he’s tackled a feature film, following the dismally received Basic Instinct 2 in 2006. He’s returned to the UK for Urban Hymn, a modest character study set against the 2011 North London riots. Emotionally effective and featuring a trio of genuinely unfussy performances, the familiar trajectory too often settles for superficial examinations of its characters, hobbling them of the necessary interiority to make them more than one-dimensional archetypes. Despite this, those appreciative of feel-good narratives should take note considering the effortless dynamic of its leading actors.

Jamie (Laetitia Wright) and Leanne (Isabelle Laughland) are two disenfranchised young women in their late teens, orphans with violent histories...

Chariots Of Fire producer David Puttnam is returning to filmmaking for the first time in more than 15 years

The former Columbia studio boss is to make Arctic 30, a feature about the experiences of 30 Greenpeace activists thrown into Russia’s prison system after protesting against drilling in the Arctic.

The film is based on Don’t Trust, Don’t Fear, Don’t Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30, a book by Ben Stewart, published earlier this month.

Lord Puttnam and Le Pacte co-owner Hani Farsi of Corniche Pictures have signed a joint venture to produce the film. A director has yet to be announced.

Puttnam credits Emma Thompson, who is involved in the film and is set to help script it, with kickstarting the project.

“We wouldn’t have reached this point without her and it is very much her decision from here on in as to the degree to which she will be involved but she...

Sony Pictures

Tom Rothman, head of TriStar and the former longtime co-leader of 20th Century Fox, is officially set to take over Amy Pascal's position as Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Motion Picture Group. At the same time, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton has scored an extension of his position thanks to Sony’s Japanese owners. [Source: Deadline]

Sicario

Lionsgate have announced a September 18th limited release ahead of a September 25th wide release for "Prisoners" director Denis Villeneuve's drug cartel thriller "Sicario". Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jon Bernthal and Daniel Kaluuya star.

Blunt plays idealistic FBI agent (Blunt) who is enlisted by a government task force to take out a Mexican drug cartel leader in the lawless border area between the U.S. and Mexico. Taylor Sheridan wrote the script. [Source: THR]

Giant Under the Snow

Filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones ("Rob Roy," "Memphis Belle") is...

Director of The Jackel and Memphis Belle joins $30m fantasy epic.

Michael Caton-Jones has been confirmed to direct $30.9m (£20m) children’s fantasy film The Giant Under The Snow.

The film will be an adaptation of a 1968 adventure novel by John Gordon, which centres on three school friends who discover an ancient treasure and become embroiled in the final act of an epic battle of good against evil.

The live-action feature is intended to act as the first in a trilogy, with shooting planned at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios as well as on location in the UK from October 2015. Theatrical release is planned for Christmas 2016.

VFX will be handled by London-based CineSite, which worked on the Harry Potter franchise and more recently handled Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow.

Caton-Jones is developing the screenplay with Tom Williams (Chalet Girl, Kajaki).

Ralph Kamp, former Icon Productions CEO, will likely be global sales and distribution agent through his outfit...

"The Shawshank Redemption," "Fargo," "Kundun," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," "The Man Who Wasn't There," "No Country for Old Men," "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "The Reader," "True Grit," "Skyfall," "Prisoners." Surely one of those films won the Oscar for Best Cinematography, right? Nope. Roger Deakins has 11 Oscar nominations but, to date, has not been granted access to the Dolby Theater stage (or the Kodak Theater…or the Shrine Auditorium…he's a veteran of multiple Oscar venues at this point). Could that change with Angelina Jolie's "Unbroken?" Possibly. Deakins pushed himself quite a bit on the film and played with a few aesthetic ideas he hadn't really dabbled in before. It's only the second time he's worked in the war genre (after 2005's "Jarhead"), but he paints Jolie's canvas with striking hues of contrast. For a film that could be a formidable prestige Oscar player,...

Eddie Izzard stars in Castles In The Sky, a film about the invention of radar. Here's our review...

There is a certain timeslot from days gone by, in your local independent cinema, that Castles In The Sky utterly belongs to. The weekend afternoon matinee slot, designed specifically for families, that I remember from my time working in a cinema as the 'Tired Daddy Doesn't Want to Answer His Five Year Old's Innocent Yet Fiendish Questions' slot. Also it rained popcorn. Now this slot mostly consists of variable animated fare put on at 10.15 in the morning by chain cinemas who don't appreciate the sanctity of the lie-in. This is a shame, as Castles In The Sky evokes the nostalgia of films like Memphis Belle, despite being tonally more similar to movies such as the 2005 Lassie picture.

Based on a true story, the depiction of Robert Watson Watt and Skip Wilkins'...

Nearly seventy years have passed since World War II ended, but it continues to capture the imagination of Hollywood. It is easy to see why--after all, it was one of the biggest conflicts in history, starring quite possibly the nastiest bad guy of all time versus a diverse cast of heroes as big as Winston Churchill and George S. Patton and as seemingly small (but still important) as the enlisted men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and the women who worked in homefront munitions factories. There are numerous powerful and inspirational stories, both fictional and nonfictional, that can be pulled from such rich material. One such story is that of the Memphis Belle, the B-17 flying fortress that was one of the first to complete all 25 of her missions--and successfully, at that.

Read more...

Mark Harris's study of the interwoven war careers of Ford, Wyler, Capra, Stevens and Huston impresses Philip French

The two most remarkable film books of last year were both about the ways – mostly craven and temporising – that the American cinema responded to the rise of Nazism: The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand and Hollywood and Hitler 1933-1939 by Thomas Doherty. By a useful coincidence, the first important movie history so far this year, and likely to prove one of the most memorable, is Mark Harris's Five Came Back. His complementary work picks up Urband's and Doherty's studies at that crucial point where the bombs fall on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and Hollywood rolls up its sleeves and swaps the diplomatic velvet glove for a patriotic steel fist. As in his impressive first book, Scenes from a Revolution, a long, detailed study of five 1967 movies that...

Where others may diagnose death for a failed film, a certain cinematic surgeon endeavors to breathe new life into moribund movies through extreme and invasive procedures. Whether it be rescuing invaluable elements from train wrecks for transplant, identifying cause of symptoms or resurrecting doomed patients with wholesale rewrites, Cinematic Surgery aims to show that even the most tragic or insolvable cases can be saved in the operating/editing room.

Such is the current culture in the filmmaking world that the very notion of suggesting ‘remake’ is considered sacrilege, a soul selling throw down to the cynical moneymakers bleeding dry a stable of beloved movies of the past in pursuit of sales through nostalgia and association, all to the detriment of goodwill and creativity. But the problem isn’t in the concept, it’s in the choices.

On occasion, there has been a film put out that sells itself through the strength of its tantalizing premise,...

There’s been a bits-and-pieces feel to Matthew Modine’s big-screen career of late, with worthy roles in chunky projects like The Dark Knight Rises insufficient to satisfy a fanbase he built up with breakthrough turns in Full Metal Jacket and Memphis Belle. Happily, for anyone craving a dose of pure, uncut Modiness, he's soon be popping up in Steve Jobs biopic Jobs and according to Variety, he’ll be joining Olivia Williams in Altar, a new British horror earmarked for Toronto’s Frightfest in SeptemberThe pair will play an American artist and his English wife and see them fixing up a country pile with a very dark past. There may be shades of The Conjuring, The Woman In Black and other classic haunted house tropes in that back story: a Satanist who sacrificed his wife had been driven to madness by her ghost – a lot of bad feng shui...

“It was a script I wrote solely for myself. I thought, I’m not going to try to cater for an audience, I’m going to write something mad and see what happens. And everyone seemed to really like it, and they convinced me it was a good idea to make it, so I decided to just go with it” Anthony Woodley, the director of ultra-low-budget British sci-fi flick, Outpost 11 is talking about how the project came about.

It’s the middle of December, and we’ve headed down to a remote airfield in rural Surrey to visit one of the more unusual sets we’ve ever been on. With a budget that wouldn’t even pay for the catering on most movies – including most low-budget movies – Outpost 11 is an exercise in squeezing every last penny out of the production budget. For the last three weeks the crew...

Director Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim was always bound to be a detailed visual feast of FX, sets and costume design. Nonetheless the real main players in this film wear no costumes at all, the kaiju (Japanese for ‘strange beast’) and the tower-block sized Jaeger robots (German for ‘hunter’) built to defend Earth from their attacks. As such it fell to costume designer Kate Hawley, fresh from The Hobbit’s design team, to emphasise the humanity of Pacific Rim’s smaller-scale, flesh and blood characters.

Hawley’s job was made extra difficult because most of these characters are involved in the military Pan Pacific Defence Corps, and yet we arrive (intro excluded) at the end of their story, when funding has ceased and they are cast loose from official channels. Consequently we see a resistance group of scientists, technicians, engineers and pilots; a background cast wearing muted work clothes,...

Director Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim was always bound to be a detailed visual feast of FX, sets and costume design. Nonetheless the real main players in this film wear no costumes at all, the kaiju (Japanese for ‘strange beast’) and the tower-block sized Jaeger robots (German for ‘hunter’) built to defend Earth from their attacks. As such it fell to costume designer Kate Hawley, fresh from The Hobbit’s design team, to emphasise the humanity of Pacific Rim’s smaller-scale, flesh and blood characters.

Hawley’s job was made extra difficult because most of these characters are involved in the military Pan Pacific Defence Corps, and yet we arrive (intro excluded) at the end of their story, when funding has ceased and they are cast loose from official channels. Consequently we see a resistance group of scientists, technicians, engineers and pilots; a background cast wearing muted work clothes,...

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

If you ever thought of Rose Tyler as Memphis Belle, the t-shirt for you is now available from ShirtPunch for just $10! Even if Rose Tyler isn’t your cup of...

The post Awesome Bad Wolf Tee from ShirtPunch! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Before Matthew Modine became an actor and starred in movies like Vision Quest and Memphis Belle, he dreamed of becoming a painter. It was the back-up career he never needed after a solid 30-year career of memorable roles on film, television, and the Broadway stage. But he never lost his artistic eye, which proved useful in other creative pursuits, beginning with his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on 1987′s Full Metal Jacket. Modine documented that complicated production experience with still photography, and working with the esteemed director of 2001 and A Clockwork Orange inspired him to try his own hand behind the camera.

Chicago – Sean Astin has distinguished himself through two memorable roles – that of the title character in the Notre Dame film “Rudy” and as Samwise Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But not many people know that he is a passionate civic supporter, once serving as campaign manager for his friend Dan Adler, who didn’t survive a congressional ballot runoff in 2011.

Born Sean Patrick Duke in Santa Monica, California, Astin made his film debut in the legendary “The Goonies” at age 13. After doing supporting roles in notable films like “War of the Roses” (1989) and Memphis Belle (1990), Astin did a memorable turn as the lead in “Rudy” (1993) as a million-to-one student athlete for the Notre Dame football team. His next act was the iconic “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy from 2001-03, where his Sam Gamgee character and the rest of the Lotr universe will live in cinema history.

"It's our job. Ours. Nobody else's."

The crew of the Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress aircraft nicknamed Memphis Belle became the first to ever complete 25 missions over Europe in May of 1943, which was captured in the 1944 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress. Nearly 50 years later, Michael Caton-Jones, who would go on to helm movies like Rob Roy and This Boy's Life, directed the fictional version of the crew's story in 1990's Memphis Belle, airing tonight at 8Pm Et/5Pm Pt on Reelz.

The movie takes place both prior to and during the 25th mission of the Memphis Belle and saw its 10 man crew played by young stars of that era, including Matthew Modine (Married to the Mob, Full Metal Jacket), Eric Stoltz (Some Kind of Wonderful), Sean Astin (The Goonies) and musician Harry Connick Jr. in his first ever movie role. The movie is dedicated to...

William Wyler's wartime documentary Memphis Belle is fairly well-known, and even had the questionable honor of a dramatic feature film remake by Michael Caton-Jones and David Puttnam. Slightly less celebrated is Wyler's follow-up, which came out after the war had ended. John Sturges assisted.

Thunderbolt (1947)—which you can watch in its entirely via the YouTube embed, above—deals with American fighter-bombers in Italy and might be useful to show to anybody convinced by the George Lucas-produced Red Tails, once they're out of diapers. See Catch 22 for a different view of the same theater of operations.

Who knows how much artifice went into these films? Certainly footage from multiple missions was cut together to create cohesive narratives depicting single missions, but all the combat is genuine and the material was gathered at tremendous risk. Air crews wondered how Wyler could function without collapsing in terror: they had a plane...

I did my homework on Memorial Day: I thought of real veterans for awhile, let my mind wander over to hot movie veterans, and then ranked the 10 hottest of those for your viewing pleasure. I might be the best American I know. Insert your hilarious "You're a Grand Ole Flag" puns here.

Without further ado, here are my picks for the 10 hottest military gents of cinema. I sort of apologize that the list skews to newer films, but I swear I've selected some (literally) golden oldies too.

10. Josh Hartnett in Black Hawk Down

The doe-eyed hunk prince of 1998-2002 capped off his reign with his most critically acclaimed film, one where he got to fill out fatigues and show us how damn manly he could look.

9. Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Stop Loss

Jgl pulls off the shaved head look like no thespian since the man who ranks at #2 on our list.

Ever since Bing Crosby starred in the 1930 film "King of Jazz," countless musicians have tried, with varying degrees of success, to parlay their musical ability into a side career in film.

The following list -- dug up in honor of this Sunday's Video Music Awards on MTV -- is proof that not all musicians are created equal when it comes to their acting abilities.

For every Mariah Carey in "Precious," you can find a Mariah Carey in "Glitter," but these 40 artists have shown that they can, at least some of the time, create memorable roles and transcend their musical careers. Sometimes, they even win Oscars.

40. Madonna

During the nascent years of MTV, no female artist had more influence visually than the Material Girl, whose mix of eye-popping fantasy and gritty urban realism videos continue to influence a generation of vocalists. Despite a Best Actress Golden Globe for 1996's "Evita," the...

Fighter piloting is inherently cinematic, so when a new movie comes out in the vein of Memphis Belle and Top Gun, I already hear the swells of music and gunfire. But in the case of Red Tails, the new Anthony Hemingway drama that arrives in theaters January 20, the grace of the genre is replaced with spotty dialogue and catatonic performances. Cuba Gooding Jr., you may as well call this movie Plane Trip.

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Shaolin Trailer Even directors like Benny Chan deserve a break. Seeing how Jackie Chan's Who Am I? and Robin-b-Hood had about as much punch...

They shall beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks;

One nation shall not raise the sword against another,

neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 2:4

War is a nation’s ultimate commitment of blood and treasure. As such, the stories a people tells about its wars – and don’t tell – and the ways it remembers its wars – or chooses to forget them – tells us much about the kind of people they consider themselves to be at different times in their history, as well as the kind of people they really were…and are.

For most of the 20th century, the war film was a Hollywood staple. From one era to the next, war movies documented the nation’s conflicts, reflected the national consciousness on particular combats as well as on thinking going far beyond any one, particular war. They’ve been propagandistic and revisionist,...

There is a lot of Batman news in the past couple of days. Warner Brothers Pictures officially released a statement yesterday that the principal photography has officially begun for “The Dark Knight Rises.” And the first official photo of Bane was also released today. Now Variety has reported actors Matthew Modine, Tom Conti and Joey King have joined the growing cast of the third and final film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise. As always, their roles are kept under wraps—leaving the Internet to the speculations of the possible characters. Variety later reported Modine will be playing a character named “Nixon.” Modine has been in several films including “Full Metal Jacket,” “Memphis Belle,” and “Cutthroat Island.” He recently starred in last year’s “The Trial,” and will be seen in the upcoming HBO movie “Too Big to Fail” as Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain. The veteran actor Conti recently...

Ask Rhod Gilbert, Alan Davies in Whites, Harry & Paul return, the end of This Is England '86 and a lot more besides in our UK TV round-up!

Comedy veterans return, the new guard challenges, and a freshly peeled sitcom is brewing on the burners. Plus, a brilliant little bit of geek film lovers' animation wraps up the next seven days of telly goodies.

Ask Rhod Gilbert is new to BBC1 and airs Monday at 10:35pm. The first of an eight episode run sees the stand-up comedian answer questions, from the considered to the ridiculous, with the help of guest comedians and other personalities joining regulars Greg Davies and Lloyd Langford.

Another new series, this time on BBC2, is Whites, starring Alan Davies as a country house hotel chef. A similar role was this TV fan's favourite performance by Lenny Henry in Chef! (apart from the wonderful Christmas fantasy flick,...

British producer Lord David Puttman has been announced as a keynote speaker at the Screen Producers Association of Australia Conference in Sydney on November 19.

“We need coherent public policy with clear, meaningful and achievable objectives that cover all aspects of the industry. Lord Puttnam’s experience and knowledge will be invaluable as we determine the future landscape,” said Spaa executive director Geoff Brown in the official announcement.

Puttnam produced films such as Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, The Duellists, Chariots of Fire, Local Hero, Memphis Belle, Meeting Venus, The Killing Fields and The Mission. He retired from film production in 1998, and is currently a working peer in the House of Lords, focusing on education, the creative industries and the environment. Putnam is also head of this year’s jury at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

For more information about the conference, visit www.spaa.org.au/conference...

Screening at Edinburgh International Film Festival, the documentary feature Restrepo deals with the Second Platoon, Battle Company, 173rd Airborne Brigade, stationed in Afghanistan during a 15-month deployment which sees several of them killed and most of the survivors left with what seems like lasting psychological damage. Audiences may feel some small portion of that emotional turmoil after being exposed to it.

First-time directors Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger achieve what seems like near-total access to the American side and capture images of combat comparable to those of William Wyler's Memphis Belle and Thunderbolt in their hair-raising reality and sense of peril. The only aspect of the situation on the ground we're unable to see is the enemy's side of things. And of course, the embedded perspective robs us of any overview of the political causes of the war. In this sense, the movie resembles Kathryn Bigelow's fictional Iraq...